Nathan's Possibly Interesting web site
Commonsense design blog
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of everyday product design
Here is a striking photo I snapped in Tubingen, in southern Germany, showing a building with a tile roof… bearing a weird pattern: The cause of the red circle on the roof is unmistakable, the air flows around the chimney… but it is the opposite of what you’d expect, and the details are a bit … Read more
Continuing the theme of using the right tool for the job, here’s my take on a tool that is everywhere: the trusty old stapler. Most everyone uses the usual kind if stapler, either the small size 10 or the regular standard office model. The problem is, neither of these is any good for more than … Read more
A while back I was visiting the wonderful Museum of Business History and Technology in Wilmington, Delaware, which has countless typewriters, that incredible device that will soon be completely forgotten. Among these faithful servants of the authors of yesteryear I saw the device in this photo. It’s an old Hebrew Remington 92 from around 1930, … Read more
Isaac Asimov once wrote a SciFi story named The feeling of Power, in which a future age has become so accustomed to computers that the rediscovery of how to calculate sums with pencil and paper – or in one’s head – is considered a major breakthrough. That age may be nearer than we think. Recently … Read more
Saw the panels below by an elevator. The left one is the familiar elevator control; the one on the right, however, uses fake buttons and reads: “Before you press, think of your health – use the stairs!” Good advice, nicely implemented…
We have a McDonald’s in downtown Jerusalem (of course!), but within spitting distance of it there is another kind of fast food restaurant, one that is dear to the hearts of the city’s old time residents. It is the Ta’ami restaurant. Ta’ami is a tiny restaurant: one room, opening right onto the sidewalk in Shamai … Read more
Was looking up RosettaStone, that Rolls Royce of computer-based language teaching tools. They have a nice web site with demo videos and all – very handy. And they had a video there promoting their system, and as it zipped past something seemed wrong. I rewinded a bit and there it was: my native Hebrew language, … Read more
We were in a large drugstore in Germany, when I noticed that all the shopping carts had a large magnifier lens attached to them, like this: The magnifiers were fitted in a sturdy and elegant holder, designed to allow the carts to be stacked in a row as usual. This was a new one for … Read more
Every child knows that postage stamps are affixed to the top right corner of the envelope. You lick the stamp, and you press it to the envelope at that corner. And it stays there. Or does it?… I was sending greeting cards recently, putting them in the envelopes they came with. Some of them sported … Read more
These days vendors have become masters of trivial warnings, as seen in coffee cups that warn us their content is hot, and countless other examples. Recently I ran into an amusing case. The little piggy is yet another form of the classic kitchen timer. What makes it interesting is the inscription on its base: “Not … Read more